rmdmoore

Responses from rmdmoore

Vandersteen Aficianados please step inside (Quatro)
So, despite the somewhat low sensitivity ,these speakers are an easy load. The bass is handled by a separate class D amp thats in the speaker so you're really only driving the midbass up. I've not tried it but I suspect you'll be fine. You can cal... 
Thoughts? - First Watt F8 / Vandersteen Treo's
While the sensitivity of Vandersteen speakers is usually in the 80s, as someone said, their an easy load. Bring your amp to your friend's house. Also, give Vandersteen a call. They'll likely put you on the phone with Richard and he'll tell you wha... 
Kiseki Blue N.S. vs van den Hul Frog Gold
@idv  The internal mechanics of the cartridge don't change when you retip and you could have either soundsmith or Steve at VAS put on the same type of stylus. I'd give one of them a call. The retipping will likely be under 1k and you'll get your ... 
Component contributions to “sound stage”
Man, Ive spent the last few years chasing this and am finally satisfied. Soundstage has so many different aspects and I don't think it's a simple answer. It's going to depend on your room and setup.  1.speakers. Your other components will have a ... 
on the cheap
The wiim products are excellent   
Turntable Cartridge upgrade question.
The Hana 1200 cartridges are outstanding for the money. I'd also say that while the Schiit mani 2 is a great phono stage for the money, you’re going to want to upgrade that at some point as well. I ran a Hana ml1200 with a music surroundings nov... 
The $10,000 Question
Quicksilver and Rogue are great at that pricepoiny and both pair well with vandersteen speakers. You could stay under budget with a pair of newest model 2 or move up the line to the model 3. I think you’ll find the pairing sounds amazing  
New TT : Balanced vs. Unbalanced Connection?
What balanced gets you, mostly, with phono is a few db of gain. So if you had a very low output cartridge you might find some benefit in going balanced. Also, if you're cable run was very long, like more than 12 or 15 ft you may find significant b... 
RCA Phono Interconnect Under $400
This may not be very popular but I recently purchased some cables off eBay. What you want in a phono cable is extremely low capacitance. These are super low. I was using transparent audio cables and these blew them away. I very much believe that c... 
Help With New Preamp Decision
You've presented some interesting options. My personal experience is stick with units with 6sn7 tubes. Much more natural sounding. A few of the ones you've mentioned use them. Also as someone mentioned, not all the units you mentioned are fully ba... 
Tubed preamps and Power amps- How old is too old???
I recently tly purchased a 20 year old pair of Atma-Sphere MA-1s. They were purchased from a dealer and had been recapped and retubed. They sounded better than anything I'd had in my system or that I'd heard at a shop. My point is that some of tha... 
Help with speaker selection
I'd ad Vandersteen Quatros CTs. They're in the 17k range I believe. Vandys are well known for their musicality and listenability but when they add carbon tweeters to a speaker the detail is amazing. They also have room tunable subwoofers built int... 
Speaker Pairing - First Watt F8
I think it depends a lot on what you're looking for in the sound characteristics and what you're listening patterns are. My experience is that horns, like Klipsch, can sound amazing and have a very wide sweet spot but that they don't image as well... 
Step Up Transformer Question
@lewm the Bellari has a switch that changes the turns ratio between 1:12 and 1:30. If you're asking how I'm reducing gain in my phono stage, I'm changing tubes. It's a strange design but in my Rogers PA-2 the way you adjust gain is by switching ou... 
Step Up Transformer Question
@mulveling so the new cables came and I was able to eliminate the hum. Once I did that I played with things a bit. Started at 1:12 with maximum gain in my phononsrage. This sounded great. It seemed to have more body and depth than whatever SUT is ...